The Cities & Autonomous Vehicles Initiative will leverage the collective action of a group of 10 cities to better understand how AV technology can address the common needs and challenges of cities and to collectively challenge the global market to validate how AV technologies technology can address real city needs through pilots.

The process will benefit all cities by providing more insight into how AVs can be leveraged to benefit the city and will possibly lead the group (or a subset of the group) to advance new AV pilots.

Step 1

SOLICIT ideas and opportunities for how AVs could solve existing city problems from colleagues across a range of city departments (transportation, zoning & planning, human services, education, etc.) Through a 2-week internal campaign, the city lead asks staff from many different departments to put forward short-term projects and ideas where AVs could help the city address a challenge or opportunity. (May ’17)

Step 2

PRIORITIZE cities’ common priorities at the second convening of the Bloomberg Aspen Initiative in Maryland, where the participating ities collaborate to identify one or more common areas of interest for pilots and the terms of collaboration. At this point cities can opt in to move ahead with the joint pilot program. (June ’17)

Step 3

IMPLEMENT a pilot Program if Partner Cities choose to advance. The Initiative will support the group or a subset of cities in developing the appropriate process to engage the market and implement pilots. (Jul’17 – Sep ’18)